A dazzling barmaid served my pint. It was only then I realised: Oh my God, I’ve given up drink for Lent

Every working Thursday for the past six years, I’ve taken the short walk at lunchtime from the office to the pub for a pint of London Pride and a think about what I should write in Friday’s paper.

And so it was yesterday, when I took my habitual route through the local churchyard, pausing, as I always do, at the familiar grave of Ann Archer, who departed this life on January 24, 1824, aged 30.

As always, I felt a pang of sorrow for this young woman and her family, about whom I know nothing except what I can glean from the inscription on her gravestone.

'Sorry dear, what did you say?': Apparently 16 per cent of men go into autopilot at the wheel while their partners are trying to talk to them

Almost certainly, she died from complications of childbirth, because buried with her is her daughter Mary, who died six days after her mother, aged ten days.

Beneath their names is carved a little poem — not a very good one, but no less moving for that: ‘God called me in my prime you see/ My daughter in her infancy/ You know not how short your time may be/ So all prepare to follow me.’

Yesterday, as always, I reflected that at least poor Ann was spared the knowledge that the child for whom she sacrificed her life would survive her by less than a week.

And with my familiar sympathetic thoughts for her husband, who lost his wife and daughter in such quick succession nearly two centuries ago, I continued on my familiar way to the pub.

Deadly

On autopilot: Ordering that post-work pint of London Pride at the local can become second nature

There, as always, stood the barmaid, with her familiar dazzling smile, her eyebrows raised in inquiry and her hand on the London Pride pump. I gave her my habitual nod, she pulled the pint and I took a deep gulp . . .

It was only then that the realisation crashed upon me: ‘Oh, my God! I’ve given up alcohol for Lent!’

Up to that point, I’d been doing so well (oh, all right, apart from one deliberate lapse to save myself from the deadly sin of spiritual pride). Yet from sheer, unthinking force of Thursday lunchtime habit, I had plodded to the pub and broken my Lenten fast without even realising it until it was too late.

Never mind. At least I’m not the only one who shuffles through life in a daze, obeying instincts forged by routine, with a brain slipping continually into neutral.

If a survey this week is to be believed, millions of Britons have absent-mindedly driven to work on their day off, while 22 per cent of motorists confess that they regularly fall into ‘autopilot’ — not thinking where they are going or why.

Apparently, finds the insurance firm esure, we waste an average £47.25 each year on petrol by driving extra miles along habitual routes before we wake up, engage our minds and remember where we are off to.

If that figure sounds unconvincingly precise (how on Earth do they arrive at it?), even harder to believe is the survey’s finding that ‘as many as 16 per cent of men’ go into autopilot at the wheel while their partners are trying to talk to them, paying not a blind bit of attention to what is being said to them.

What? Only 16 per cent? All I can suggest is that the other 84 per cent must be very economical with the truth.

Speaking for myself, I can sit for hours going through the autopilot motions of listening attentively to my wife’s chatter — with a nod here and a sympathetic grunt there — without taking in a single word she says.Indeed, she would be the first to testify to the truth of this (and how irritating that the survey supports her belief that women are much better listeners, with only 10 per cent confessing that they disengage their minds while their menfolk are talking).

Horror

But it’s not only when I’m following my lunchtime routine or pretending to listen to my wife that I’ve landed myself in trouble by allowing the autopilot of habit to take over the functions of my brain. Indeed, it’s been a problem all my life.Etched for all time in my memory, as I may have mentioned before, is the dreadful morning nearly half a century ago when I was about nine years old and sitting in Mr O’Donnell’s French class.

When he asked a question to which I knew the answer, I thrust up my hand, meaning to shout: ‘Sir! Sir! Sir!’ But the crucial part of my brain was in autopilot mode and the word that came out of my mouth was: ‘Mummy!’

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever called a middle-aged French master ‘Mummy’ in front of a classroom of satirical schoolmates at an all-boys preparatory school. But if you haven’t, you should take my advice — and just don’t.

Fatal autopilot: Before I knew what I was doing, I had reached out and grasped the old man's hand to shepherd him across the road

Then there was the occasion, two decades later, when I found myself waiting to cross the road beside my then boss, the daunting Fleet Street veteran Sir John Junor. At the time, I had young boys of my own at home — and as a gap appeared in the traffic, the fatal autopilot of paternal habit kicked in.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had reached out and grasped the old man’s hand to shepherd him across the road.

Within a split-second, I realised what I had done and snatched my hand away. But too late. The look of horror and incomprehension in his poached-egg eyes will haunt me to my grave.

Years passed before I found the courage to mention that incident in print.

But when I did, a reader sent me a kind letter about something similar that had happened to her, which went some way to consoling me.

She had a young daughter, she said, but she was travelling in a train without her when her maternal autopilot took control. Gazing out the window, she heard herself saying aloud: ‘Oooh, look! Cows!’

The businessmen in her carriage stared at her, then at each other, as if she was barking mad.

Worrying

So perhaps most of us switch off our brains from time to time, as we follow the tramlines of our daily routine. I just wish it didn’t happen with such increasing frequency as the years roll by.

More and more often these days, I find that I’ve ‘read’ five or six pages of a book — by which I mean that my eyes have focused on every successive word and my fingers have turned the pages — before it suddenly dawns on me that I haven’t taken in a single sentence. Then I have to go back again to search for the place where the autopilot took over from my mind.

More worrying still, I find that I’m starting to get parts of my routine mixed up, asking at the Costa coffee shop for ‘a packet of red Marlboro, please’, when what I mean is a white Americano — or asking at the station for a pint of Pride, when what I want is a one-week, three-zone Travelcard.

But enough! There’s only one answer I know to the cares of ageing. Lent, be damned. I’m off to pay my respects to Ann Archer and her infant daughter — and who knows where my autopilot will lead me from there?